A Summer Lesson
by a-fearsome-thing
Summary: What Blaine learned at the hands of his childhood bullies the summer before his fourth year at Hogwarts was something that would stay with him for a long time.


There's a peace settling in over the lake as the sun finally sets fully, the last lingering light snuffed out as night creeps in. Blaine usually finds this time of the evening beautiful and so calm; it's why he always runs around sunset—he has to keep in shape for Quidditch now that he's finally on the team.

It's good, too, because the park tends to be nearly empty so he doesn't have to stop every five minutes to talk to Mrs. Johnson about school or Mr. Caine about Coop. He can just run.

Unfortunately, it also means that no one is likely to find him as he lies black and blue and bleeding in the trees just off the path.

There is not a single part of his body that doesn't hurt, and every time he breaths in, there's an additional stabbing pain that spikes through his chest. The park isn't well lit and the street is too far away for the lights there to contribute to his visibility at all, so Blaine can't see well enough to know just how bad-off he is.

It doesn't feel like it can be good.

Blaine tries to shift so he can somehow get to his feet and find help, but as soon as he moves, a fiery agony spreads up his side and steals his air. Tears roll down his face as he takes short, shallow breaths, trying not to cause more pain but needing to _breathe_. His fingers twitch and spark occasionally with white bursts of magic—now, when it is useless to him.

His wand, likewise, is useless at his side, snapped from a solid kick to his upper thigh, shattered irreparably upon the next blow. All the magic in the world, all the spells learned in three years of schooling, all the top marks in his classes, and here he is, starting his summer holidays with a broken and useless wand. A broken and useless body.

Blaine tries to think where his mobile would have landed when they tore it out of his hands, but it had all taken him completely by surprise. He never expected to finish his run today gasping for breath beside a lake, covered in his own blood.

Then again, who would?

When it first started, he hadn't even heard them coming.

Chad, Daniel, and Michael. Three boys older and bigger and intent on doing him harm. They had bullied him for years, even before he came out, although it definitely got worse after. Before Hogwarts, Blaine had often had flairs of wandless magic to protect him, to the point where he even grew skilled at controlling it. Once he'd started at Hogwarts, they become easy enough to avoid and Blaine let his guard down.

He fell out of practice.

And that once natural gift for wandless magic had abandoned him when he needed it most. His wand and all that he's learned to do with it had crippled him for the one thing that routinely saved his life.

Blaine hadn't even been able to try to reach for his wand in the holster on his leg before he'd been immobilized.

They'd come from behind him, two grabbing his arms while the third ripped his phone from his hands and his headphones from his ears, chucking them away.

He'd tried to fight back, but they all knew from the beginning that it was futile, that Blaine—scrawny, tiny, barely-fourteen-years-old Blaine, who has spent what feels like his entire life running away from them, running even to school in a different world, and who has never won a fight in his life—stood no chance when trapped and outnumbered.

Struggling hard, Blaine had been forced off the path by Dan and Michael, dragged into the slightly wooded area for better cover, and pushed roughly against a tree.

The bark dug into his back and Chad had forced his breath completely out of his lungs with a solid hit to the solar plexus. With four hands gripping his upper arms and holding him in place, Blaine had only been able to breathe in desperate gasps, black hovering on the edge of his vision as he tried to recover from the shock of the attack.

It was when he had finally registered the lacrosse stick sliding in and out of focus in front of his face that Blaine tried to gather himself to scream for help, but Chad slapped a hand over his mouth and got right in his face, tapping the stick menacingly against his cheek.

"You scream, you make any noise? We use these." The words were said so lowly they were almost a whisper, but Blaine heard them and hadn't felt a shred of doubt that Chad was deadly serious.

The threat had successfully kept him quiet, and by the time Blaine had realized the sticks wouldn't have made a difference, really, he'd been incapable of shouting for help.

A blow to his cheek had knocked his head back against the tree behind him, dazing him enough that he didn't see the following punch until it had made contact with his nose, the accompanying _crunch_ audible as Blaine's head had struck the tree again—it had been an assault on two fronts and he could do nothing about it.

Now, afterwards, all he can do is lie in the dirt with magic dancing along his fingertips and blood still sluggishly trailing down his face.

He can't remember every blow, the way books sometimes describe; it's all jumbled up into harsh words and voices, blurry forms, and pain. So much pain.

Some of it is more distinct than the rest, called to mind with each shift of bone and trailing agony.

The twist to his arm that ended in a crack.

 _Hold still, you fucking queer._

 _Bloody hell, Mike, keep the fucking fairy there! Is the pansy boy too strong for you?_

The kick to his knee when he wouldn't stop struggling that finally sent him to the ground.

 _Just let him lie there. On the ground where he belongs._

 _Hear that, Nancy? You're shit._

The kicks kept coming after that, from all three of them now that two weren't needed to hold him up anymore. Blaine had curled up to protect himself as much as possible, hadn't even thought about reaching for his wand until he'd felt that, too, shatter. Like his ribs. Like his hope for survival.

He thinks maybe they spit on him before they'd finally run away, but he'll never be sure.

Everything feels a little disjointed and heavy, like his body doesn't really belong to him; it's just something made up of foam and weights, and it's smothering him.

He wonders vaguely when his family will notice he's not home. Cooper's coming to visit. He'd promised to be back to meet Cooper. Maybe his mom will be worried and come looking for him. It's Cooper's birthday soon. Maybe they'll have cake. It's not his birthday, but maybe Cooper will share his wishes?

Blaine closes his eyes tightly and wishes he were home instead of here. Wishes he were at Hogwarts even more.

Blaine unconsciously curls up a little tighter into himself as if the thought of the best thing to ever happen to him were something tangible he can wrap himself around, but instead of comfort, he feels the subtle shift of bone and a burst of pain in his ribs. He forces himself to relax again.

Hogwarts didn't care that he was gay. His House, on his first night there, had told him they valued everything else about him that had been mocked and derided for years. Wizards, for all the danger they could do with their magic and hatred, had never left him bleeding and crying with a useless right arm to clutch to his chest and odd bulges in his forearm that he doesn't want to think about too closely.

No bone is sticking out, though.

Blaine supposes he's lucky.

He gags, suddenly, and the acid burns its way up his throat. His ribs have been jostled by the seizing muscles; he can't even muster the energy to spit the bile out of his mouth. Blaine feels it leak over his lips and slide down his jaw to drop clingingly off his face. Just one more indignity to suffer through tonight.

He'd managed to forget all of this while he was away at school. Three years without being mistreated for his passion for music, his clothes, his hair, his sexuality…he'd forgotten how cruel the Muggles in his town can be.

He'll never be able to forget again.

Unless, Blaine realizes with a sudden, heavy sort of certainty, he's actually dying right now.

It is getting harder to breath. There's probably blood in his lungs.

So much for man's greatest treasure, eh? This is what Ravenclaw got him: awareness of his impending demise because of traits they encouraged. Maybe Gryffindor has it right instead. Maybe if he'd had any semblance of courage, he'd have stood up to them years ago and never let it fester like this. Maybe if he didn't run away from everything, he'd have been able to do something.

Maybe he just deserves this and that's why it happened.

Blaine rolls onto his back as carefully as he can, which amounts to little more than a slightly controlled flop that jolts his everything and draws out yet another painful groan. Squinting through the blood sticking his eyelashes together, Blaine wishes he could see the stars, but the trees are in his way. Is Andromeda out now? He could use a Perseus.

"I need a hero," he mumbling sings to himself, "holding out..." An ache fills his chest that has nothing to do with the physical and Blaine loses himself to despair; he's not a hero, he hasn't got a hero, no one's coming, and he can't hold out much longer.

It's hard to stay conscious, now. The trees are blurry above him. Blaine's not sure if it's blood, sweat, tears, or creeping unconsciousness making it that way.

Still, if he's going to die here, he's going to do it with a wand in his hand at least pretending he tried. Unfortunately, the pieces of his wand are on his right, so all he can do is rest his damaged limb in their general vicinity.

He'll die a Wizard. That's the only place that's ever accepted him, anyway.

Blaine thinks of Cooper, again, and is sad he'll miss his birthday.

He thinks of his mom and how sad she was when he left for school and is sorry he'll make her sad again.

He thinks of his dad and how maybe this will make it easier for him.

Blaine thinks of himself and how this is a kind of running away he doesn't want to do.

Blaine thinks of how he doesn't want to die.

There's a flash of light that bursts through his eyelids— _oh, when did my eyes close?_ —and then Blaine doesn't think of anything anymore.

 **A/N** : So this was born of Darren's comment ages ago now that Blaine was a Ravenclaw. I'm one of the people that waffles between Hufflepuff and Gryffindor for him, so thinking of him as a Ravenclaw was interesting. It actually fits rather well, if you look at the Pottermore letter, but this was a way of exploring how Ravenclaw!Blaine fits into my picture of him as a character. This particular part has undergone, I think, three complete revisions by this point. It's obviously focused on how a Sadie Hawkins type incident would give us the Blaine we were introduced to at Dalton and reconcile that with later seasons. It got away from me a few times, and parts of it barely resemble the meandering thoughts I had about Blaine's views of the Houses (it was cut almost completely), but I'm hoping to turn this into a verse. I have other ideas for how the different characters fit into it, and how their stories change when in a world of magic.

If you shockingly have questions about what ideas I've got for other characters (House, wand, heritage, mainly), I could have an answer.

As for Blaine: he is currently in Liverpool, England, here, in Newsham Park (picture ( 5548/10324827356_1fe48db0f1_ ) that made me pick it, actual park ( . /PICS_Newsham_ )). The wand that was just shattered was alder with a phoenix feather core.


End file.
